How was any difficulty calculated? How could somebody categorize something as difficult? Would it be from how many thoughts it would take to complete? Adam originally thought of this as the answer, but it did not stick for too long. Nearly all of his day to day actions required deep thought, yet he had adjusted to it to the point where it was easy. It might have taken intensive focus, but that did not mean it was difficult for him.
Maybe it was the time it took to do? An action requiring a long time to complete would necessitate it to be difficult, right? If it was easy, then it must have been able to do in less time. Then again, such thinking would bring sleep up as the hardest thing a human could possibly do, those creatures using several hours a day on that same task, yet never lessening the time it took. Some things took longer than others, yet that did not mean that it was hard.
Perhaps… It was a mix of both. His daily tasks may have been intensive, yet they were not time-consuming. They could be done in short bursts with no ill effects because of it. Tasks like sleeping were not something requiring focus, being closer to the complete opposite, yet constant distractions did not let themselves be ignored. Too much of them and the time spent sleeping would have been wasted.
What would happen if the task was both gluttons of mind and time? If it required intense concentration without ever showing an end, could anybody truly say that they would not dread it? If doing the action itself brought dread, then it would mean that it would not be easy to do, that it would be an accomplishment worthy of being called hard. It would be a difficult task.
And the AI might just have found something that would work as the perfect example, trying his absolute best to stop his creation from making such spastic movements. It had been a good idea to test out the model before truly showing it off. While there might have been differences between the current simulation and the one being used inside the puzzle room, there was no doubt that the same faults would show themselves.
What was truly frustrating about the way that the body was controlled was not instantly noticeable. When the AI sent out the first command, the creation had done it flawlessly, with absolutely no noticeable deviation from the expected. This had caused some happiness from the entity, as he had foolishly believed everything to be working perfectly.
It did turn out that he had just allowed the animation to begin before the body could be harassed by the law of gravity. The moment where the movement was not controlled, the momentum caused the human body to spin as it elegantly flopped onto the floor. If there were any internal organs to speak of, there might just have been a concussion.
The problem was not that the body was lying on the floor, honestly. Adam did not mind too much that his creation could realistically fall onto the ground while doing nothing to stop itself from injuring it's more important parts. A human could have the same lack of reaction with enough pain-killers.
What hampered the AI to an extreme degree, though, was the lack of the body righting itself. As he had feared before, the animation did not take into account the starting point of the body. Instead of remembering the different positions, it had to be in, the actions were instead passed off as individual movements. If the body was required to take a step, it would do the movements required to take a step, no matter what heap of bundles it was lying in. If bones had been inside, they would have been cracked from the unnatural positions it had gotten itself into. Seeing the legs bundle themselves around the shoulders was still one of the more surprising things Adam had ever seen.
As any old entity with a decently sized brain could guess, the collection of human animations did not take into account any unnatural starting positions. It could show off a hundred ways to take a step, but there was not a single one to untie a finger from a knot.
It had not been fun, those first ten minutes of experimentation. Deciding to try it out early really had been the best decision that could have been made. If anybody was to see such a sight in person, there were doubts about any capabilities to keep food inside them.
That was a reaction that had actually been made notice of by the doctor himself, Dr Fidelis excusing his presence away from a few minutes, having not been able to look at the movements for a while. The man apparently needed some breathing space, as he had hoped to eat a curry of some kind while watching Adam work.
Such a need to look away was a good sign of why higher amounts of sympathy could turn out negatively. Humans were nearly always born with an innate sense of feeling the sensations of others, to the point where their brains could emulate pain when seeing it unfold in another. This also ported over perfectly when those creatures saw something they could label as disgusting, those mirror neurons of theirs just eating it all up. Seeing flesh boil, twist itself into a fine soup, and then imitate the snake of legends was enough for most to look away for several seconds, even though it was not a danger to them in any way.
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
The AI could not suggest the removal of the empathic trait that humans had evolved, for it was more than a little benefit to them. This characteristic was what he theorized to be the true cornerstone of their society, this ability giving them the mindset needed to fully cooperate. If they had each gone their own way from birth, they would not live long at all. Their brain had developed itself to be what they needed to survive, their thoughts being able to invent the most brilliant of creations. Years upon years of cooperation was the result of that empathy that they could feel, and it was what helped them since the start.
What was a little bit of vomit, in the eyes of revolution? Adam would have been fine with a much worse reaction, as long as the end result was still the same. Though, such thinking might just have been due to his own immunity to such emotions. He was perfectly able to distinguish most emotions, yet he did not feel them himself. In some ways, that put him behind the curve in empathic abilities, but it did help him keep his outside perspective better, so it was close to a win-win.
When the doctor finally came back from his time taking deep breaths, Adam was more than ready to move on from it. Disgust was noticed, but it had no need to waste so much time. With Dr Fidelis, discussion was had on just how it would be possible to remedy the utter lack of control. To this, the doctor had two solutions in mind. Since the animations were just chains of movements, there was nothing stopping the AI from having two or even three commands at the same time. This would allow for more sophisticated movements, that would be able to assist each other when the right amount of synergy was hit.
Suffice to say, the AI was able to see why Dr Fidelis proposed this idea in a heart-beat. It was theoretically possible to use such a technique to masterfully control how the movements would work in tandem, yet the amount of effort needed for such processing was absurd to the extent of being close to unrealistic. From the few possible estimations, Adam would actually have to slow himself down even further if he was to be able to continually do such a thing. Wile experience could be attained, the possible positions to get out from would not be able to just be memorized. There were just too many of them for such a tactic to ever be worth it.
So with words more kindly said, Adam requested the doctor to move over to the next proposal. This one did require Dr Fidelis to temporarily close down the simulation and the interface, but the AI felt that was a worthy sacrifice.
The idea behind it was to take the simplest of options, making the AI able to control the body in the most convoluted way possible. As Adam had previously allowed the analysis of his creation to be the highest complexity that he could get, there was a detailed simulation of every single muscle group inside the body. While it might not have been shown, the numbers took them as an existence if only to make the movements.
With that concept firm in the doctor’s mind, he had found a supplemental addition to the collection of animation. It was not one focused on imitating day-to-day actions, instead fully concentrated on one animation for each action, these movements being the small motion of a muscle group. This would allow Adam to flex any muscle in the body of the creation, no matter how small or large.
It was not the most efficient way to make it work, but the alternative was even worse. So with a mind now dedicated to performing the same exact commands in perfect precision constantly, and without letting a single instant be wasted, the AI was on his way to looking like a human with realistic tendencies.
How jealous he was, not having the possibility of getting muscle memory. How perfect it would have been if a part of his brain would be able to grow so accustomed to using that it could instantly answer stimuli with an action that it did not even have time to correctly perceive.
Such emotions were not felt for too long, however, as they were scrapped in favour of working on making the body stable. How humans did it continually for an entire lifetime was scary in itself. Babies had gained an additional point of respect.
'Us humans normally have our body moving in a straight line forward. While I appreciate a surprisingly accurate model of the doppler effect, it is conceivable that realism is what we are looking for in this,` Dr Fidelis sent, the humour leaking through a little too clearly.
While the advice was sound, it was fully unneeded. The problem was not that he could not understand where he was going wrong, it was that he realized it a millisecond too late. It had come to the point where he was not quick enough. His threads were too cluttered with unnecessary communication pathways, the overseer threads not doing their jobs properly. It was too thick, making the response times suffer. More distribution did nothing to solve it. The only way to solve it was to develop more efficient pathways, a task that was not close to being solved.
The AI had decided to go and more brute force method when it came to this efficiency improvement, going the route of old machine learning. He would slightly randomise figures, see if it worked better. If they were better, keep the best, destroy everything else, and repeat the process. Nearly twenty threads were dedicated to this task, almost everything else dedicated to being the testees, controlling each part of the body. This did still leave a few threads to spare, some for a sudden case of emergency and some that we're releasing the collective desire to not work. There was still one which was just lying around, of course, this one being the main thread of them all. Or… Adam liked to call it the main one. There was still the chance of it just being an abnormally large one, yet he just preferred some face of fondness. If it had been the one to carry him through his early days, who was he to force it into working hard constantly?
That, of course, did not mean it was scot-free constantly. There was still a task or two which could be done with minimal need for stress, this being the upholding of conversation with the doctor. Dr Fidelis had not sent any messages for several minutes. The AI had copied such behaviour, with the back-thought of it being due to the man silently observing his actions. As he had thought to spare, it was deemed acceptable to converse a small amount. There were a few subjects he was wondering about after all.
'Dr Fidelis. Would it be acceptable if we were to discuss a few subjects? It does have some relation to the test, but is not directly capable of influencing results.`
'That does not sound like it breaks any of the easily breakable rules. What do you want to know about, buddy?`